Time is accelerating; 2015 came and went by. It doesn’t seem so long ago when
we were celebrating the first article published in the Pan African
Medical Journal (PAMJ) in mid-2008. It is a new year, an opportunity
to reflect on
our hits, misses and future plans. This report looks into just that.
Academic publishing continues its rapid transformation with the rapid
development of
the open access publishing model. In 2009, it was estimated that
17% of the world´s articles were published in fully open-access journal [1];
a percentage surely higher in 2015. Open access publishers and journals
are mushrooming at unprecedented speed, fueled by various motives,
legit and predatory. Unfortunately the status of biomedical publishing
in Africa,open access or not remains grim. A study published in
2009 by Dirk Schoobaert
in the Journal
of Medical Librarian Association showed that only 38 of the 5000
journals indexed in Medline were from Africa [2]. A quick
analysis of the Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ) show that,
in January 2016,
771 (7%) of their 11129 journals are from Africa out of which 577
journals were from Egypt alone [3]. Although the absolute
number of journals from African countries has increased in DOAJ over
time, the contribution
of Africa to the open access movement remains very small.It is in
this fast changing and highly competitive environment that we sailed
through 2015.

PAMJ in numbers

Since the publication of its first article in July 2008, PAMJ has experienced
a rapid increase in the number of manuscripts received and published. 7922 articles
have been submitted for consideration since July 2008 (Figure
1). In 2015, 2282 articles (982 (43%) in English and 1297 (57%) in French)
from 61 countries were submitted for consideration; 1198 articles were published
the same year (39% and 61% in English and French respectively). The dominant
manuscripts categories in 2015 were Case Reports, Images in Medicine, Research
and Case Series (Figure 2).
Images in Clinical Medicine is becoming the fastest growing manuscript category
submitted to PAMJ with an average increase of more than 400% every year since
2012; this increase has to do with the widespread availability of camera on mobile
phones and other mobile devices giving clinicians the opportunity to share their
bizarre, unique but educational encounter straight from the consultation room
with
their
colleagues around the world. In the long term we hope to establish a valuable,
practitioner-generated library of medical iconographies useful for clinical education.
Close to 2/3 of manuscripts submitted in the categories Image in Clinical Medicine
and Case Report originated from only two countries (Morocco and Tunisia) highlighting
the quality of the technical facilities in the countries and the eagerness of
their young practitioners to share their experience. These two countries were
virtually absent from published research in 2015, which was dominated mainly
by Nigeria, Cameroon, The Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya (Table
1).
2015 was also the year we scaled up our human resources in order to cope with
the increasing popularity of the journal. The PAMJ Cameroon Office which was
officially opened in 16 December 2013 in Yaoundé with three full staff now hosts
7 associate editors. With the West (Cameroon) and East (Uganda) Africa offices
operational, PAMJ is moving towards its goal of building editorial capacities
and transferring modern editorial technology to the continent.

What is in store for 2016?

Improving the overall quality of the journal and authors experience remain our
highest priority. This will be achieved through systematic adherence to high
editorial standards. From January 2016, manuscripts in French will now include
an English translation of the title, keywords and abstract provided by authors
prior to publication; this is an effort to expand the reach of French manuscript.
It is also our hope that 2016 will also see several of our projects come to fruition
including the launch of our: a) Clinical Quiz a continuous medical education
quiz derived from case reports and images published in PAMJ, which will allow
clinicians
to challenge their knowledge in clinical medicine; b) the PAMJ Conference Management
System; an advanced online module to support the organization and management
of scientific conferences in Africa.
Training remains at the core of PAMJ strategy to help build a generation of African
researchers fluent in reporting science. So far, an estimated 120 young researchers
in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia attended workshops on some aspects of scientific
writing organized by PAMJ and its partner AFENET; 2016 will see the launch of
PAMJ University; a mechanism to help build the capacities of an increasingly
large
cohort of young African researchers in the fundamentals of reporting science.